Ember Bronx
by z3r0gamer
Summary: Yang is sick of being the cripple, useless, left behind. Blake was the only thing keeping her going, and now she's gone too. But then, Yang Xiao-Long has never known when to quit. She takes on a student from Signal and passes on her fighting style, all the while sparring with the monster in the back of her mind. Post V3, no pairing but references to Bumblebees.
1. Chapter 1

All in all, Yang Xiao-Long could honestly say that her life had sucked lately.

It all started with the Vytal Festival. The entirety of Team RWBY had been absolutely thrilled. They were cleaning up! The first round was a breeze, Yang and Weiss managed to scrape a win against the FN of Team FNKY, and then Yang just mopped the floor with Mercury Black. That fight was absolutely thrilling; a one-on-one match against an opponent of equal skill. Times like that were why she loved it; the thrill of the fight, the rush of testing your skills and finding them adequate, the constant feeling of balancing on a razor's edge. That was why she wanted to be a Huntress. Then it had ended. Mercury's aura dropped to almost nothing. The punk had jumped at her, tried to get in some kind of sneak attack.

Yang had snapped.

She'd admit to that. She lost her temper. This was supposed to be a friendly spar, an exhibition, not some sort of fight to the death with underhanded tactics left and right. She'd always had a fiery temper. In hindsight, a block, a counterattack without Ember Celica engaged, would've sufficed. But in the heat of the moment, Mercury Black had the gall to attack her when her back was turned, and she wanted him to pay. The shotgun fired as the fist connected, the trigger engaging as her fist recoiled from the crunching impact, and the leg snapped like a candy cane.

She didn't understand why everyone was so upset with her. Sure, she shouldn't have shot him, but that's an occupational hazard when you sneak attack someone who's trained most of their life to put down monsters. Reflex actions are kill shots most of the time, and Mercury was honestly lucky she hadn't gone for anything vital. Then she'd seen the footage, seen herself shoot Mercury while he was on the ground. That wasn't what had happened, but the cameras didn't lie. Nobody believed her. Ironwood thought she was off her rocker, Qrow thought she'd just lost it in the fight, and Ruby didn't know what to think. The last two hurt the most. Ruby and Qrow, her own family, thought that she might just lose it and break someone's leg for no reason.

If anyone had bothered to force her into therapy, the therapist would say the depression started because of that. That was when Yang stopped feeling well, at any rate. No energy, no motivation. Getting out of bed and getting something in her stomach was a Herculean effort, possible only with the assistance of Blake Belladonna, her partner and possibly the only person who believed Yang's story, believed that something fishy was happening.

Cinder's plan had happened without a hitch. The Vytal festival was interrupted with a massive Grimm assault. The Atlas mechs were hijacked by Torchwick. Everything was going to hell, and Yang was happy to have something she could punch without a fucking military tribunal coming down on her. She'd tracked down Blake and they'd fought their way through the Grimm and mech-troops. Then they'd seen that red-haired Faunus in the white mask, and Blake had panicked.

Blake Belladonna, the most reserved and calm member of Team RWBY by several orders of magnitude, panicked.

The guy was a real creep, too, going on like Blake was his. Menacing her. Threatening her. Yang stood back at first, letting her partner fight her own battle. The brawler knew a thing or two about those fights you had to win for yourself. But when the redheaded White Fang creep beat her partner and made to finish the catgirl off, Yang had lost her temper again. None of her technique, none of her training, none of her skill. Just Semblance, heat, fire, rage. She didn't care if he was a Faunus or not. She was gonna rip off his arm and beat him with it; Blake wasn't his property, and nobody but _nobody_ hurt Yang's partner.

The funniest thing about what happened next is that it didn't really hurt. One second, she'd been rushing the stupid bully, ready and willing to commit murder then and there. The next, her Aura was depleted and she couldn't feel her arm. The shock of going from about 80% of her Aura to absolutely none had dropped her more so than the actual loss of that Aura, and the next thing she knew, she was at home in Patch, arm bandaged, Ruby in a coma, and Blake and Weiss nowhere to be found.

Ruby had woken up soon, tried to reassure Yang, support her. Yang couldn't bring herself to care. Blake was gone. Possibly dead. Her dad had told her the story; Blake had dropped Yang off just before Qrow brought back an unconscious Ruby, and had left without saying anything, to anyone. She'd already been bandaged, but Tai had to change them when the first set had soaked completely through with blood. She saw the first binding in the trash. Simple cloth tied with a familiar black ribbon, stained with dry blood now. Damn her, where did she get off just leaving like that?

Yang couldn't even bring herself to work up a proper anger. For a while, she sat in bed. Learning to eat left-handed was a pain, but she managed to keep going, remembering the handful of times Blake had forced her and using that as motivation, or else just waiting for Taiyang to get worried and drag her out of bed and to the table.

Then Ruby had run away. The little girl left a note, said that she had to bring the team back together. That did it, that brought back some kind of emotion. Too bad it was blistering fury. Bring the team back together. Then why was Yang still here? They could've run away together, or better yet, _brought Taiyang with them._ But Yang was down an arm and Taiyang was vital to the restoration effort, not to mention Signal being past capacity now that Beacon's students and teachers had been forced into the smaller combat school. No, Yang knew what she meant. Ruby needed all the members of her team that weren't _useless,_ that weren't _cripples._ She wasn't part of RWBY anymore, not with one arm down like this.

Yang had stormed out of the little house in the woods of Patch, hair aflame, stating her intention to "bring that little girl back home, and missing arms be damned," but Ruby was long gone. A little asking around had revealed that she'd been with some familiar faces. The rest of Team JNPR, to be exact. The blonde with white armor could be anyone, but the kid with a pink streak in his hair and the ginger girl with a hammer and more energy than a power plant couldn't be anyone but Ren and Nora. At least Ruby was with people who knew what they were doing, but they were way out from Patch by this point and nobody was going to take Yang over to the mainland, not with Tai going right behind her and checking all the docks for both his kids.

In a moment of clarity, Yang realized that two choices lay in front of her. Either she could go back to her house and sit in bed, wait, worry, and fall back into the funk she'd been in since the singles round of the Vytal festival, or she could get out there and _do something._

So when her dad found her, she'd asked him if any of the kids at Signal wanted to learn how to fight with their hands. Taiyang had seen his fair share of hunters go through similar trials to his daughter; loss of limb was serious, but loss of a partner was even worse. He'd been in that boat before, too. So he'd understood what she meant; _is there someone I can help so that I don't feel so worthless?_

Even better; he'd known just the kid.


	2. Chapter 2

"The kid's name is Mac," Taiyang informed his daughter as they made the hike from their little home in the woods of Patch to Signal Academy. The trip brought back memories of better times, when Yang had been a student there just a couple years ago. When Yang still had her arms and her sister. "That's it?" she responded, curious. "Just Mac? No last name?" Her dad nodded back at her. "Yeah. It's not my story to tell, though. Try not to bring it up. It... it's not happy." Yang grunted an affirmative. She knew all about not wanting to talk about things. She'd tried to talk to people and they'd just hurt her in reply. She'd gotten sick of it, and she could see someone else feeling the same way. Mac wouldn't have to worry about telling his story so long as he didn't badger Yang about the Vytal festival.

The rest of the hike passed in comfortable silence, the winter air feeling nice against Yang's skin. She didn't need a jacket like her dad; her Semblance kept her warm inside and out, like always. It'd been an adventure when she'd first discovered it, trying to regulate her own temperature. That's why she started wearing all those revealing clothes; it hadn't been about looking good, at first. She needed to keep cool. Now, she probably could go back to dressing conservatively, but it just felt too good turning all the guys' heads walking down the street. The thought brought a grin to her face; at least those guys were too busy looking at her chest to bug her about her arm.

The pair of blondes walked through the doors of Signal. It was Saturday, but they'd arranged to meet Mac in the gym here. The kid was dedicated, if the sound of fists against sandbags was anything to judge by. The impacts echoed down the hall as they approached the appointed room, and Tai had opened the door and strode inside without hesitation.

Yang's first thought was that this kid was _short._ Like, he was a tiny bit shorter than Ruby. He had the muscle definition of someone who'd been boxing for a little while. Not completely untrained, or at least, not completely inexperienced. Still, he looked self-taught. His stance was sloppy, his punches had a lot of excess motion, and he wasn't throwing his weight behind the hits, using just the strength of his arms. Yang was jolted out of her observation by her dad's cry of "Hey! Mac! I have someone for you to meet!"

The kid stopped assaulting the sandbag to turn, and Yang finally stopped looking at his stance and arms to notice something else; his hoodie was neon pink. It seemed completely incongruous, and it reminded her of Ren and his mysterious pink hair streak. She had to fight a chuckle as the kid walked over, trying his hardest to look her in the eye despite his head being right at her chest level. The kid's distraction amused her, but his dedication to not openly staring at her chest impressed her a little. More mature than most people his age, then. "Yo. Name's Mac. Are you..." The kid trailed off, unsure of where to go. He didn't want to say that he knew her from TV; the Vytal festival had been a fiasco in multiple ways. He didn't want to bring up the arm, either. Thankfully, the blonde girl saved him from the looming silence with a "Yep. I'm Yang Xiao Long."

For her part, Yang waited for the questions. The "what happened at the festival?" The "Are you OK?" The "What happened to your arm?" Even "Can you even fight?" Not a single one of those came. Mac just nodded and held out his hand. His _left_ hand. The one she could actually shake. He didn't comment on the gesture, make a show of it, or anything stupid like that. Just a simple greeting. _Thank Oum._ She took the kid's hand and shook, a grin on her face. "So, Mac, Dad told me you wanted to learn how to punch monsters in the face." The kid shuffled his feet and blushed a bit. "Yeah. It's... something I've wanted to do for a while. I know most people use weapons but it's just this idea I can't get out of my head, like this is the way that _I_ would fight. Mr. Xaio-Long said that was important, that self-expression was part of what Hunters were all about, since we fight with our souls." The teacher in question shot back a thumbs-up from where he was checking the floor and back wall of the arena, foreseeing an imminent need for that particular section of the gym. Yang snorted at her father and laughed. "Yeah. That sounds like Dad. Grew up hearing the same thing. It's true, though. Aura and Semblance are _you,_ on the deepest level. Everything you are and will be, versus the monsters hiding in the woods. So yeah, fighting the way that feels right to you is important. C'mon."

The girl led Mac over to the Arena, which Tai had deemed fit for use apparently as he stood in the corner. Yang pulled out her scroll, setting it on a bench and synching it to the Aura monitors before putting it back in her pocket. Using the damn thing with one hand was infuriating; Mac was finished a solid five seconds before her, obviously putting two and two together and, perhaps more impressively, keeping any concerns about Yang fighting one-handed to himself. "Hey, Mac, you got a weapon?" Yang called over to him, Ember Celica engaged on her left hand. The other gauntlet was collapsed and lying in the drawer by her bed. She couldn't bring herself to get rid of it. The kid shook his head. "Didn't think I'd need it today."

Yang shook her head and disengaged her weapon, the shotgun gauntlet returning to the form of a simple gold bracelet. "Always bring your weapon with you. You're a hand to hand fighter, so you're always armed to some degree, but once you get to the point where you're used to fighting with your weapon, you'll mess yourself up trying to correct for the lighter weight on your arm. Try to get it to mechashift into a bracer or something, so you don't have to use it whenever you need to punch someone to have the weight there." She took her normal stance, the hole in the right side of her guard something that couldn't be helped, given her current state. "Show me what'cha got, Little Mac."

Yang could give the kid this; he was a fast one. He'd crossed the distance quicker than she could've, but all the problems he'd had with the sandbag were still there. His punches were sloppy, his stance was weak, and he wasn't throwing anywhere near as much force as he was capable of into his hits. She bobbed out of the way of anything he sent at the perceived weakness in her defense, blocking hits targeted at her left side with ease. Kid had talent, sure, but she was three years or so of training ahead of him, one of those years interspersed with bits of actual combat experience. "Alright, Mac. Lesson one; stance is everything. Your feet are moving, and that's good, but they need to stop when you use your arms." She demonstrated for him, making a point of keeping on the move until the second she needed to block something, then rooting herself like a tree and sending the force through her arm and torso down into her legs and the ground, siphoning some of it off with every strike to feed to the fire in her soul. "We're responsible for fighting monsters that are bigger and stronger than we are. We need to use our heads to make up the difference. It doesn't matter how much force you're using if it all goes into the ground." Yang smirked as realization dawned on the kid's face. People thought she was dumb and violent, the downsides of being a hand-to-hand fighter and a blonde, but she had studied and practiced her style for a while, and she was really quite intelligent when it came to the physics of punching an Ursa into another Ursa.

Without warning, Yang began her counteroffensive, testing Mac's defense with some light jabs. "You're fast, but you need more than that. You need accuracy and power, too. Can't just have one or two of these things, not when you have to fight the Grimm. You need to hit fast, hit hard, and do it exactly right. Mess up in a spar, you sprain your wrist and have to go to the nurse, but mess up in real life and that sprained wrist will get you eaten." The kid didn't reply; he was concentrating on defense, now. With one arm, Yang had to push herself to maintain an appropriate attacking speed, but the fact that she wasn't committing to any one blow made it easier. They were probes, testing the kid's defense. It was really dodge-heavy compared to how Yang liked to work; he didn't try to block much at all. "The good news is, you get to be a total badass once you get it down. Like this." Mac's eyes widened as Yang maneuvered him into blocking a torso shot and put her Aura, her Semblance, and all of her weight into it, sending the kid skidding across the floor and pushing his aura down 20% in that one solid connection, her eyes flashing red and her hair a wave of fire cascading behind her before she relaxed the effort and deactivated her Semblance.

Yang held up her hand to call the spar, then pulled Mac from the ground. "Wow," the kid said. "You're gonna teach me how to throw a punch like that?" Yang smiled sadly. "Nah. I think you're gonna end up punching things better than that. My weight distribution's off, not to mention I'm way lighter now and I can't follow any of the real solid hits up any more." Mac's eyes flickered to the tied-off sleeve of Yang's shirt. "Yeah," Yang patted him on the head, making him stumble back and blush. "That's why, kid. I'll eventually correct for it, but I won't ever be as good as I was, not even with one of those Atlas prosthetics. I wouldn't be able to use my Semblance on it like I did at the end there." She shrugged. "It's a thing. It sucks, but I'll live."

Mac nodded, unsure of what to say. Taiyang came to the rescue, breaking the silence. "Well, that was entertaining. What do you guys say we go grab lunch and set up you two's training schedule?" Yang and Mac looked over to Taiyang and both nodded; Mac because he was hungry and Yang because just standing around here was going to get frustrating real fast. The three exited Signal in search of hot dogs, discussing what times worked best for Mac and Yang, and what exactly they needed to work on. Yang felt a little better while they were doing it. Not really good, but definitely not as depressed as she'd been yesterday. Sitting around and moping in bed didn't solve anything. Now, she'd actually be able to do something.


	3. Chapter 3

A plan for the coming weeks was easily worked out over hot dogs and soda. Mac really only needed help with his hand to hand. Taiyang was too swamped to do one on one coaching with the kid like he had taught Yang, so the fact that she was willing to pass it on was a huge help. Meeting every day would be counterproductive; Mac needed to work on his own, too, and off-days from training were absolutely vital. It wasn't laziness like a lot of people thought. There were only a handful of weapons more demanding on your body than hand to hand combat for a Hunter; you had to make sure that your muscles were in absolute peak condition, literally fit to trade blows with Beowulves and Creeps at a bare minimum. Taiyang could probably go a round or two with a Deathstalker, but he hadn't let any fights with one drag on long enough to really find out. Off-days were important because, even with Aura, muscles need time to repair themselves. "If your soul's always fixing your muscles, that's less Aura to soak up the hits you're gonna take when you make a mistake." Yang might've been a little hypocritical saying that, given her propensity to block things she could easily dodge, but her Semblance gave her an excuse on that account. "Two days on, one day off. That's what I want you to do for now. It's not gonna match the week, but it's the best thing I can tell you. Tomorrow's an 'on' day, though; we're going back to Signal after lunch and I'm gonna fix a few of the big issues now, before they can get worse. Then, tomorrow, we practice some more, and the day after, you rest. We'll meet back up at Signal the day after that to start over."

The plan made, the trio finished their meal in relative silence. Unlike the kind of silence that permeated the Xiao-Long house without Ruby there and with Yang in her funk, this one was more companionable and less oppressive. This teaching thing was kind of cool. Yang could see why her father did it with her. Besides, how often do you get to punch someone across an arena and help them? Yang had discovered her Semblance before Taiyang had trained her, and he'd sent her further than she'd sent Mac. _Not for lack of trying on my part,_ she thought bitterly. It was a good lesson, a good way to impress someone on the first lesson. Still, she wasn't kidding when she said she wasn't in top form right now. She shook herself from that chain of thought as she finished the hot dog and picked up the soda for the first time. Switching with one hand was too much of a pain in the ass. She drained the bubbly beverage, wishing it was a Strawberry Sunrise instead of a strawberry soda. Taiyang wasn't letting her drink, though, which was odd because he hadn't had a problem with it since she'd graduated Signal. He knew she didn't ever overdo it after that first time, where she'd gotten smashed under his watch. He'd planned that, she knew it, though he'd never admit it. Show her firsthand how much hangovers sucked. It had worked, too.

Taiyang Xiao-Long was a happier man now, marginally. He was terrified for Ruby, even if Yang had shared her information about the other three hunters-in-training that had gone with his youngest. Still, even a blind man would be able to see the change in Yang. She wasn't all better, not by a long shot, but she had a goal now, something to do. Just like he'd had after Raven had left, with raising her and pulling Qrow out of a bottle. Just like he'd tried to keep his eyes on removing Qrow from yet another bottle and keeping up with two children when Summer had died. That second blow had put him down for a while, and thank Oum for Qrow managing to sober up enough to at least take Ruby under his wing and keep Yang out of too much trouble. Yang had it worse than him, arguably, with a one-two body blow from her partner vanishing and her sister running away, not to mention the deaths at Beacon; that robot girl and the Nikos prodigy. Even with that, though, she was pulling herself up. Slowly, sure, but it had taken Tai a couple years to get his shit together when Summer had passed. The teacher stood up as he, too, finished off his food, simultaneously with Mac, both of whom had eaten a little slower than Yang, not fueled by desire to get to a sweet soda and an inability to swap hands. "Welp, I'll let you two handle things from here. You've got my scroll number if you need me, Yang. Try not to hurt Mac too much, sweetheart." Yang scoffed and Mac paled just a little. "No promises, Dad." The young student paled even further until Yang and Taiyang both gave him a reassuring wink. "Aw, we're just messing with ya, Little Mac." The kid in question crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "Do you have to call me 'Little Mac'? Can't you come up with something else?" Yang looked pensive for a moment, then shook her head. "Nothing that rolls off the tongue quite so nice." The teen sighed in defeat and said nothing more on the subject, wise enough to recognize a losing battle when he saw one.

Yang stood after Taiyang vanished around a corner, her strawberry drink almost gone entirely. "Alright, then. Go grab your weapons and meet me back in the training field behind Signal. We got some work to do, and it's the live fire kind. Bring some cheap Burn ammo, the stuff you practice shooting with." The blonde brawler drained her drink entirely and tossed the cup into the trash. "We're gonna find everything wrong with your form, and then we're gonna fix it. That's what today and tomorrow are all about, otherwise your practice is just gonna ingrain all the mistakes you're making." The short, dark-haired teen nodded an affirmative and rushed off in the direction of the residential part of Patch, and Yang strolled smoothly towards Signal, enjoying the thought of being able to show someone else the joy of punching monsters in the ugly white face.


	4. Chapter 4

Yang threw left jab after left jab at the unfortunate tree, Ember Celica putting tiny cracks and chips into the wood every time she punched. She was determined that she'd iron out at least part of her weight distribution issues before Mac came back with whatever his weapon was. So far, though, it was proving difficult. She knew she shouldn't be hitting that much weaker; her left arm was intact and she'd worked hard to make sure she could hit with either hand. Even accounting for this being her weaker hand, though, her force and weight were still off. It was driving her insane trying to puzzle out. She'd have to ask her dad later, see if he could help her figure out a way to compensate.

Yang's repetition was interrupted by the sound of the metal gate to the training field creaking open. She hopped the back side of the fence, moving from the woods back into the open area. Sure enough, Mac had shown up with a pair of bright green gauntlets. Unlike Yang's, these were full gauntlets that covered all of Mac's fingers. The metal was a similar alloy to her own, and for good reason. The number of alloys that were both aura-reactive and high-toughness enough for Hunter weapons was already a small one, but adding in that they had to be just the right density for augmenting hand to hand combat without weighing down the Hunter using them too much, and there were only a handful of materials that made the cut. It's a good thing that Signal taught weapon design. Yang would've never known that on her own, and she might've ended up with a sub-par weapon, but she'd custom-machined Ember Celica herself under the watchful eyes of Signal's blacksmiths, and Mac would've done the same with his own weapons.

"Hey, Little Mac!" She called out, waving her arm at the kid. He waved back and made his way over to her, smiling as he did so. "Hey, Yang. This is Jade Knockout, a Variable-Force Impact Shotgauntlet." Another advantage of that Signal training; everyone used the same terminology. Variable-Force Impact weapons, or VFI weapons, could be loaded with specialized Dust rounds or, more uncommonly, unrefined Dust powder. They were designed so that the dust would ignite under certain circumstances, allowing for the enhancement of strikes but not activating that Dust on every single attack. Yang hadn't opted for VFI; the combination of opposing forces with her Semblance and the Dust was just too irritating to balance, and fire was almost guaranteed to make most forms of Dust combust. The shotgun shells were some of the more stable variant of propellant Dust, and Yang's Semblance fire didn't reach them in enough force to fire them, but VFI rounds had to be more temperamental by nature. "Nice," Yang said, inspecting the weapons. The shells loaded near the wrist, much like Ember Celica, with the barrel between the knuckles of his middle and ring fingers. "What's the VFI trigger?" Mac grinned. "An uppercut shifts the mechanism so that instead of firing a shotgun shell I can use the Gravity Dust."

Yang looked at Mac in disbelief. "You mean Gravity Dust Rounds, right?" The kid's smile didn't waver in the slightest as he shook his head in the negative. "Nope. Unrefined Gravity." The blonde let out a low whistle. "That's some kick. Didn't think you had it in you. How do you manage the recoil without getting knocked on your rear?" Mac hesitated slightly, trying to find the right words. "It's my Semblance," he stalled. He hadn't really tried to explain it before. It was a little hard to do on your own; your Semblance was a part of you, fundamentally, so if it wasn't something obvious like super speed or the like, it was hard to distinguish from a normal thing you did, no matter how obviously abnormal it was. Sure, you knew what you could do, but you don't automatically know the words for every different articulation of your arm, and similarly, you don't instinctively know how to explain your own Semblance. "It's some kind of physics thing. Conservation of Momentum, I think the teachers called it. Once I get a rhythm going, a nice series of hits on something, it gets harder and harder to stop me. There's a point I can use the VFI without blowing my arm out of socket, because my momentum keeps going through the recoil. I call it the K.O. Uppercut." The blonde stepped back and tilted her head slightly, running all of that through her head again to main sure she got it. "Huh. Nice. You saw what mine was; the more force I take in, the more force I can put out. I punched out one of those Atlesian Paladins once, with a lot of help from my team. Man, was I sore in the morning after that one."

The blonde shook her head, trying not to think about the team. Everyone had split up, and the fond reminiscence was tainted almost immediately by the pain of loneliness and abandonment, but she had something she had to do now, and she'd have time for self-pity later. "Alright, then. I'm gonna wanna see that, but first we need to work on your punches." Mac looked wary, but took his stance. Yang followed suit, showing him her own boxing stance. "You've got the basics down. A good guard and solid footing. Shift your knees down a little more, relax your shoulders, and put your weight on the balls of your feet, not the heel." Mac complied, and the look on his face showed the comprehension. "Wow. That's a huge difference from not much change." Yang nodded. "Yep. It's important, too. You can move easier like that. Your weight isn't being carried by tension in your back and shoulders now, it's on your legs, which frees up your arms for the punches."

She hopped back slightly, then showed Mac a straight in slow motion. "You know how to throw a straight, but you're wasting a lot of movement. Keep the elbow in; letting it come up to the side like you did in our spar throws a lot of the force out to the side. You ought to be able to get your Semblance going faster if you can throw punches more efficiently, and you won't tire as fast." She demonstrated a couple more times before moving over to Mac and instructing him to try. A couple nudges here and there, fixing his stance when it slipped, and he could throw the straight fairly well with either hand. "Not bad." Mac's smile widened under the praise, and Yang was quick to continue. "Not quite perfect, but you're improving already. Your elbow likes to drift off course still, but you're fixing it."

A ringing from Yang's pocket interrupted her. The ringtone, an old Xiao Long family song that Taiyang had played on a guitar, indicated her dad was the culprit. "Keep practicing that for a little bit, it's Dad." She answered the phone with a rolling cadence; "Brrrrown's Morgue, you stab 'em, we slab 'em." Her dad let out a bark of laughter on the other end of the line, and Mac stopped practicing to laugh before Yang gestured for him to keep going. The Signal student's stifled chuckles punctuated every couple punches. "Very funny, Sunflower. How's it going?"

"Just fine, Dad. Really. Mac's good at correcting his mistakes." She walked to the other side of the training field, out of earshot of her student, to continue the conversation. "We're probably gonna be done with fixing all the damage in a week or so, then we can start working on new stuff. Who taught this kid before me?"

Taiyang chuckled nervously. "Nobody, actually."

Yang's voice was flat with disapproval. "Nobody?"

"Hey!" Her father was quick to defend, "It's not my fault. He showed up at Signal with pretty much the same style, nobody referred him to me because they thought he already knew hand to hand and was just working out the kinks. He came to me last month, and I told him I'd start working with him after the Vytal festival, but the restoration's been swamping me with work. Right now, he's strictly School of Hard Knocks."

With that much information, Yang could piece together a little bit more about this kid. Either an orphan or bullied, maybe both, got into a lot of fights before Signal. That's probably why he'd specialized in close combat; he thought he already knew it, and it took him a little while to figure out that he still had a lot left to learn. "Alright. He's pretty decent for self-taught, actually. Lots of wasted motion but I blame action movies and pro wrestling for all that."

Tai scoffed. "You and me both, Sunflower. At least he's not trying to curve bullets."

Yang rolled her eyes and giggled at the memory. They really shouldn't have let Ruby watch Equilibrium. Gun Kata was pushing things, even with super speed and a lot of practice. Yang was pretty sure you'd need some sort of telekinetic Semblance to pull some of that stuff off. Glynda probably could, if she wanted to. Thinking of Ruby made her chest hurt again as the fondness of the recollection wore off and the sadness stepped in to replace it.

Taiyang caught the little choke at the end of her laugh. "You OK, Sunflower?"

"Yeah, Dad," she hastily lied. She wasn't OK. It hurt to think about her team, and especially her sister, but if she let him know that he might start doubting her too. She didn't think she could take that. "Just something in my throat."

Taiyang hesitated for a second. He didn't know whether he should talk to Yang about what he'd gone through when he'd lost Raven and Summer. He decided, however, that scroll calls were not places for such heavy subjects. "Alright, then." His voice was tinged with a hint of disbelief; he'd done the same thing when Summer had tried to call and make sure he was fine after Raven vanished. Even used the same excuse. "You two be safe, now, OK?"

Yang nodded and then remembered that he couldn't see her. "We will, Dad."

"Oh!" Tai exclaimed. "I almost forgot what I called you about. Did ya get to see Jade Knockout yet?"

"Yeah, it's pretty cool. Kid's something else. Gonna see if he can show me on one of the freestanding dummies once we get the jabs and straights worked out."

"It's something to see, but I won't spoil it. We got pizza for dinner, I'll leave it in the oven so Zwei doesn't eat it before you get home. Bye, sweetie."

"Thanks, Dad. I'll see you when we're done here."

Yang fumbled with her scroll a bit to hang the device up, then pocketed it. Walking back over to Mac, she resumed her lesson. True to her word, they'd worked through straights and jabs in the handful of hours since lunch, ironing out most of the kinks in what Yang considered the two most important punches; jabs to test an opponent's guard and straights to exploit holes in it, as she'd explained to Mac. As the sun inched towards the horizon, she pulled out one of the freestanding dummies that Signal kept in a corner of the field. "Alright. I wanna see this K.O. Uppercut you're so proud of." The dummy she put down was little more than a metal humanoid with a band of sensors around the head, where the eyes would be on a human. When engaged, it would attempt to maintain its own balance, allowing the students to practice combo attacks on something that reacted like another person getting hit might. There were models for the various Grimm, but those were kept under a little more security, as they were more expensive to purchase; a combination of being bigger, more complex, and nobody really _wanting_ to get close enough to a Beowulf to figure out exactly how all its joints articulated. She flipped the switch to turn on the dummy and stood back.

Mac nodded and sank into his stance, bouncing on the balls of his feet to psych himself up before rushing in. Watching him punch from the outside reinforced what she'd thought before; this kid had speed in spades. Sparring with Ruby was probably the only reason she had it so easy keeping up with his movements. He threw a series of jabs and straights, building up a light green manifestation of his Aura around his arms. When it matched the color of his gloves, he planted his feet, dropped down slightly, and threw all of his weight in an uppercut. The VFI triggering was obvious; Yang caught herself rubbing her ears afterwards due to the force of the Gravity Dust discharge, and the metallic humanoid got an abrupt flying lesson, soaring in a lazy arc about fifteen feet in the air before crashing back down to the ground. Yang let out a low whistle of approval. "Nice moves, Little Mac." Resigned to his nickname by this point, Mac responded, "Thanks."

In perhaps the kindest act of mercy that Oum could have granted Yang right now, the kid's uppercut was actually spot-on. Mac had obviously lucked into encountering someone who performed a textbook uppercut, and managed to see it enough times and with enough clarity to mimic it. Either that, or he just had a knack for this kind of punch. She would've felt bad if she'd had to tear apart his signature move. She would've done it, but it would've made her feel bad. "Alright. Looks like it's gonna be dark too fast for us to get shooting practice in today, so we'll push all of that to tomorrow. Remember, don't practice anything we haven't covered together. If you need to burn off steam, punches, jabs, and uppercuts only." Mac nodded seriously as he removed his gloves, clipping them onto his belt. "You don't have mechashift?" Mac shook his head. "Nah. Messes with the VFI trigger. I decided carrying them when I wasn't wearing them was worth the trouble."

 _Ruby could probably help fix that,_ Yang thought, before immediately squashing that line of thinking. Ruby wasn't here. She'd run away. "Alright," she said instead. "Tomorrow, 10:30 AM, we'll meet back up here." Mac gave a joking salute; "Yes, ma'am." The blonde playfully punched the Signal student in the shoulder. "Don't you 'ma'am' me, it makes me feel old." Mac just chuckled and started the jog home, waving goodbye to Yang as she hopped the fence once again and set off through the woods towards her isolated home. There was a pizza with her name on it, provided Zwei hadn't gotten into the oven again. That dog was too smart for its own good sometimes. She and Ruby really shouldn't have unlocked his Aura.


	5. Chapter 5

"Guess who?" Yang called out as she stepped through the door to the Xiao-Long residence. The bark of a corgi and the "We don't want any cookies!" of a dad greeted her as she locked the door behind her and kicked off her combat boots, reveling in the feeling of cool hardwood and fresh air on her feet after a long day of hard work. The siren scent of pizza beckoned her to the kitchen, where her father was pulling a take-and-bake pizza from the oven, steam wafting off the golden-brown crust and grease bubbling on top of copious amounts of pepperoni. "Got here just in time, Sunflower." Yang and Tai fell into a comfortable routine; she got the drinks while he cut the pizza. It took a little finagling but she managed to get two cups upright on the counter and poured the cola from the 2-liter bottle into the bright red receptacles. Yang was putting her soda on the table right as Taiyang finished with the pizza cutter. He was about to put the first slice on a plate when they both remembered that there weren't any on the counter and Yang set the second of the two plastic cups of soda on the table to go grab the paper plates from the cabinet under the sink.

This was usually Ruby's job.

They didn't remark on it. They thanked Oum for the grub and tucked in, but dinner was a lot more subdued than normal without the two blondes' favorite hyperactive hooded Huntress-in-training. They chatted about nothing in particular, both dancing around the sensitive topics with a hesitation ill befitting two of the most direct people on Patch. Yang didn't want to talk about what was wrong, and Tai was afraid to push her. He could chalk it up to any number of things; not wanting to make her uncomfortable, giving her needed space. If he was honest, though, he was just scared to push her away like he had Raven. Three of the most important women in his life had run away from him now, and he wasn't all there either.

The pizza was consumed in silence, a solid third of it placed in the fridge with the air of a funeral rather than leftovers being stowed. One large pizza was just the right amount of food for three people, or at least three people that ate like the Xiao-Long family. The leftovers were reminders of who was missing. Tai had considered dragging Qrow over here, but the other Huntsman was off tracking down his niece with that bird-semblance he had. The house felt empty with just the two of them, and with the CCT still down they couldn't even kill time with cable. Both considered asking the other if they wanted to watch a movie, but neither one felt like actually voicing the question or going through with the plan, so eventually the two blondes bid each other goodnight and moved to their bedrooms.

Yang's nightly ritual, much like her morning one, was much more difficult minus one arm. Even getting out of her clothes was a pain; working zippers and buttons and clasps with one hand. The shower wasn't that hard at least, but she ran through all the hot water thanks to how long it took. By the time she'd finished brushing her hair, the familiar sound of her father snoring echoed through the hallway. [i]Is he louder than normal or am I not used to it anymore?[/i] Shaking her head to clear the stray thought from it, she hopped her way into her pajamas and brushed her teeth, then made her way to bed. Her head hit the pillow, but sleep fled from her. She'd been putting off dealing with all kinds of pain all day long, but now that she was here, in her bed, she couldn't run anymore.

She heard the echoes of Blake's tormentor, taunting them both. The gunshot sound of him drawing that katana of his. She felt the pain in her arm, worse than it had ever been in real life. The missing parts of her arm burned with intense fire, as though to convince her that she did, in fact, still have the limb, despite reality's evidence to the contrary. She drifted into a half-sleep, visions of fire playing across half-shut eyelids as she remembered the brutally short fight. She felt her Semblance trying to trigger, and clamped down on it. Hard. The brawler forced her Aura back into her. Last time she'd had a nightmare and activated her Semblance, putting out her bedspread was frustrating. The effort forced her back awake, her chest heaving with heavy breaths as she sat bolt upright.

Yang forced herself to regulate her breathing. Breath regulated everything about the body. Regular breathing helped stabilize emotions. In, out. In, out. Her heartbeat slowed and she moved on to the next step, laying back in the bed and focusing on relaxing every individual muscle in her body. Sleep soon followed, as it normally did, but it wasn't restful. She couldn't remember the dream, but she remembered feeling scared when she bolted upright yet again to the sound of knuckles impacting wood. Her strangled surprise and heavy breathing caused Taiyang to let himself in rather than just wait at the door, and he recognized what was happening to his daughter immediately. Moreover, he knew exactly what to do.

Yang was having the same kind of nightmares that he'd had when Summer died, if the girl so he did what he wished someone could've done for him. He sat down on the bed and pulled the shell-shocked teen into a hug. "Shh," he comforted, "It's alright. I'm here. It's OK, Yang. You're not alone." Yang responded with a weak squeeze before pushing herself out of the hug. She rubbed at her eyes and found tears. When did those get there? "Thanks, Dad." Her voice was soft as she asked the horrible question; "What's wrong with me?" Tai rubbed her head, earning his hand a halfhearted smack as her "No touching the hair" reflex kicked in. "Nothing's wrong, Yang. You've been hurt very badly and your mind needs to heal." The young Huntress-in-training scoffed. "This is healing?" Taiyang sighed sadly. "Yeah. It sucks, but you can get through it. You've never let anything stop you before, and I doubt this'll be the thing that gets you."

The Hunter stood up and pulled his daughter with him. "C'mon, get ready to face the day. I've gotta head to the mainland. They've got a building they need shifted from when Kevin dropped some Ursae on it." Yang tilted her head. "Kevin?" Tai chuckled and explained; "We had to call that giant... thing something. Someone suggested Kevin and it kind of stuck. Anyway, they need my Semblance to get some of this stuff shifted without damaging other buildings. I'll be back tomorrow, alright?" Yang nodded. "Yeah, Dad. I'll be fine now." Tai checked his watch and smirked. "Good to hear that, because it's nine-thirty now. When'd you say lesson number two with Mac was?" He hadn't even finished his sentence before Yang was off with a flurry of motion and a cry turned rant; "Dear Oum I'm running late what happened to my alarm it's on my scr- STUPID CCT FAILURE MESSING UP THE SERVERS! WHEN I FIND OUT WHO DID THIS THEY'RE MINE!" Taiyang chuckled at his daughter's antics and bid her goodbye, to which she responded with a wave, an orange tank top in her mouth and a pair of green pants slung over her shoulder. As he reached the end of the hall, he called back one final thing; "I left you a breakfast smoothie on the counter. Orange and strawberry, your favorite." She grunted something vaguely resembling a thank you as her door opened, the girl juggling the day's clothes with one hand.

Yang practically flew into the bathroom, tossing her pajamas on the floor with reckless abandon as soon as the door clicked shut. Messing with clasps took up several minutes of her valuable time, and her normal outfit was far too time-consuming for the time limit she had. She'd need to readjust, but for today she settled for a plain orange tank top and some green combat pants, along with white athletic shoes with no-tie laces. She brushed her hair faster than normal, still taking care to make sure that it was well-maintained, and she didn't realize how old this tank top was until she looked in the mirror after finishing with her hair. She hadn't worn this thing since her last year at Signal, and while she hadn't grown much, it was noticeably tight around certain portions of her anatomy, and rode up a little above her midriff. In an effort to make herself look decent she dove into her closet and emerged with a light grey jacket, tossing it on and grabbing the smoothie-filled paper cup on her way out the door. She finished the drink about halfway to Signal, at around 10:10, and the flapping of her right sleeve was driving her insane. Tossing the disposable cup into a trash bin the second she hit the sidewalk, she fumbled with the offending fabric, clenching part of it between her teeth and using her remaining hand to put a knot in it, shortening that irritating loose fabric significantly.

Mac was already waiting for her as she arrived at the training field at 10:30, and whatever greeting he'd had died on his lips when he saw her. Stupid tight shirt. She normally enjoyed this reaction from guys, but not when there was work to be done and not when she felt like she didn't look good today, not after a morning rush like that one. "C'mon, Mac. Eyes up here." The kid blushed furiously, and Yang chuckled in spite of herself. She could do today; she could shove her troubles aside for a while and focus on helping someone else. Mac probably had no idea how much he was helping her just by giving her something to do. "Alright," she announced. "Time for lesson number two."


	6. Chapter 6

Lesson number two, as Mac quickly found out, was even more repetitive than lesson number one. Thankfully for Yang, Mac's Jade Knockout was a Shotgauntlet like Ember Celica, though hers were Dual Ranged rather than Variable-Force Impact. The younger teen's weapons didn't have short-range projectiles, as that functionality had been abandoned in favor of the containment system for that Gravity Dust. That was an understandable compromise; there really wasn't a type of Dust you wanted discharging at the wrong time, but Gravity was pretty near the top of the "fuck-shit-up-o-meter". There was a reason it still got use despite its absolutely massive recoil, after all. Rather than drill live combat or duel again, Yang put Mac to work doing something that had apparently been a sport a long time ago.

She called it skeet shooting.

"Come on, Little Mac, don't tell me you can't hit a clay pigeon!" Apparently, her idea of encouragement was this... half-support, half-mocking repartee she'd kept up for the past hour. He rolled his eyes and threw a punch into the air, firing a cheap Burn shell; target practice wasn't the place for high-powered ammo, and Burn was by far one of the cheapest kinds of dust. The fiery projectile impacted with a brown disc that looked nothing like a pigeon, tearing it to shreds. Before she could launch another one, Mac turned to her and asked the question that had burned upon his mind for the last 15 minutes;"Why am I doing this, Yang?"

By way of answer, Yang smirked. "Because, young Grasshopper, you must unlearn what you have learned." Mac tilted his head in confusion and opened his mouth to ask a question, but Yang explained herself without prompting. "You've got a good talent for this, but you weren't sighting right at the beginning. You need to learn how to correct for motion at a distance; despite the motion, you're not punching, so you have to aim differently." She loaded another pigeon into the launcher and set it to fire further than Mac's targets had been. "You're picking it up well," she commented as she sighted her target, arm and stump raised in a boxing guard. She lashed out with Ember Celica, firing one of her own Burn rounds once the target had drifted further away. The shot and pigeon both curved on their own trajectories until they met, with predictable results. "But if you don't practice often you'll end up missing shots. That's not the end of the world for you and me; we've got clips. You can rapid fire, switch hands, just like I used to." They both winced as she acknowledged her newfound disability, but the blonde plowed on. "But it's always better if you hit what you were aiming at, for a lot of reasons. Never get into the habit of spray and pray, even with shotgun shells. Skill will carry you further than luck, and more reliably."

Mac looked thoughtful. Yang had cut right to the chase with her evaluation, and he had been learning how to correct his aim on these little discs. "That makes sense," he stated cautiously. "Just... how long are we going to do this?" Yang patted the box of pigeons beside her. It wasn't anywhere near empty. Mac was a little surprised; she'd carried that many of those discs out here with one arm? Those suckers weren't light, not in bulk like that. "As long as it takes you to hit enough shots in a row that it can't be luck anymore." Mac reloaded Jade Knockout and sighed. "Alright, then."

They were at the skeet shooting for another hour before Yang called it. Mac had managed to hit ten of those discs in a row, with Yang throwing them in increasingly odd flight patterns and numbers, and she said that would be enough... for today. At 12:30, they'd finished just in time for lunch, which Yang suddenly remembered that she hadn't been able to pack because of the damned CCT failure messing up the scroll servers and ruining her scroll's internal clock. She'd find her alarm clock in the depths of the attic later today, but for now she needed something to eat. Mac had been considerably more prepared, and was sitting down on a bench with a sandwich of some description and a bottle of water. Yang gave a lighthearted wave to the kid. "I'll be back in a little bit, I need to grab some food."

Yang hopped the fence and jogged away from Signal, headed for the closest supermarket. She needed something to eat, but not a huge lunch, so she darted into the store and snagged an apple from one of the produce bins, paid for it, and munched on the fruit while she walked back to the school. Her pupil had obviously finished his lunch, as he'd gone back to practicing. He'd set up one of the sandbags and he was working on his footwork in between punches. He might not have been great at conserving his energy, but the kid's feet could move, at least. Yang once again jumped over the fence around the training yard and approached. "Yo, Mac!"

Almost immediately, the kid stopped and turned, holding a hand out to stop the sandbag without looking at it. "Hey, Yang. What's next for the day?"

The blonde walked over to the sparring ring in reply, gesturing for Mac to come over there. "Well, since you're in a footwork mood, we're going to work on your dodging. I figure the best way to do that is a sparring match. I'm not gonna sandbag you, and trust me, you'll start feeling it." Yang gave a smirk that was answered with a matching grin on the Signal student's face. The younger of the pair eagerly took up his position opposite Yang, raising his guard. "Well," he called out, "I'm ready."

What followed was far more one-sided than their last spar. Yang had corrected for a lot of the problems in her stance while teaching Mac, and, perhaps more importantly, she wasn't trying to dodge anything. At first, Mac landed counterattack after counterattack, but he soon realized the problem. Yang was going 100% offense for this match, and while her Aura was going to deplete from taking the hits, he knew what her semblance was.

Unfortunately for the student, he figured this out a little late.

Yang disengaged briefly, grin on her face as she clenched her fist tighter and her eyes flared crimson. Her hair burst into flame, as did the rest of her. Her severed arm seemed to hemorrhage flames, but Little Mac didn't exactly have the time to reflect on this, because his instructor clearly believed in trial by fire. Now, Mac had to abandon his counterattacks entirely for defense. Yang shouted advice even as she shattered his defenses; adjust this foot, shift this way that much, and a million other mistakes, each one accompanied by a punch that took a sizable chunk of Aura to block. "You can't block everything, Mac!" She had shouted when his scroll indicated he'd lost a quarter of his reserves. "You need to dodge everything you can and only block what you can't! You don't have a shield to take the hit for you!"

The downright harrowing lesson in evasion only ended when Mac's scroll began beeping urgently, indicating that his aura had dropped below 20%. Yang's own aura was sitting comfortable at 65%, the result of her earlier berserker assault that she'd used to bait Mac into charging her Semblance. They both sat down on the benches, Mac more wearily than Yang. "That's it for today, Grasshopper." The time on her scroll read 1:20, so they'd been at it for a while. "Remember, tomorrow's a rest day. Read a book, work on your weapon maintenance, I don't care what you do so long as it's not training."

Mac nodded his assent, still catching his breath before answering. "Right. I don't think that's gonna be a problem. We gonna meet here at the same time, two days from now?" Yang gave her eager pupil a thumb's up and reclined on the bench, transitioning seamlessly into cloud-gazing. With one last look at his teacher, because what red-blooded male wouldn't want to look at Yang Xiao-Long just one more time, he removed his weapons and jogged off the field, presumably towards his place of residence. Yang, content to cloud-gaze, almost fell off the bench when the gate opened again and an unfamiliar voice shouted something.

"I have a letter for Yang Xiao-Long!"


End file.
